An older man with thinning blond hair, not one of the Couple, was sitting on a couch playing with his phone. He looked up, surprised, but before he could speak Betsy calmly froze him in place with a spell she’d obviously had ready, then knocked him out cold with another one. He stayed sitting up, but his eyes were now closed.

The pool table itself was a beast, eight-legged and carved and inlaid to within an inch of its life, with a matching cabinet against the wall for cues and racks of scorekeeping beads and such. It must have weighed a ton; it looked like the kind of thing that shouldn’t be on the second floor of a house. One end was half buried in boxes and teetering stacks of books. It also supported, in plain view, an old brown leather suitcase.

It was a little the worse for wear, but otherwise it was the twin of the one Lionel had shown them at the hotel. It had an oval sticker from the Cunard–White Star Line on one side.

“All right,” Quentin said quietly. “Close the door. Nobody touch it.”

It was his and Plum’s show now. Stoppard crouched down and studied one of the smaller dials on his machine.

“Nine minutes,” he said.

Working quickly, they cleared away everything around the case so that it sat by itself. He whisked the felt around it with a little broom, then dusted it with fine white ash. Plum stuffed a wet towel against the bottom of the door and got a little fire going in a brazier; she set it up in the fireplace. The room began to fill with aromatic smoke. In the background Quentin could hear Betsy laying down barriers and traps, prepping for the moment when Stoppard’s bubble popped and the owners of the house abruptly and calamitously became aware of their presence. She was sealing the room off like a vault, from every side, floor and ceiling included.

Plum chalked off angles on the felt around the suitcase, using a ruler, doing sums in her head. Quentin bolted together a skeletal metal frame around it which they then strung with wires at high tension in an asymmetrical pattern. They used violin strings—E strings, the highest ones.

“Two minutes,” Stoppard said.

“Not ready!” Quentin, Plum and Betsy said it together. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t even going to be close. Thin white smoke drifted up from the works of Stoppard’s device, and there was heat shimmer above it now. It was ticking more slowly. It looked about ready to melt down.

“You’d better believe the Couple’s going to be ready,” Lionel said.